On the Other Hand, Death - Stevenson Richard - Страница 24

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Bowman's two assistants drove off, one of them to carry the finger and the two notes to the crime lab, the

other to interview the Deems, Wilsons, and Tad Purcell.

I got Bowman off in a corner and described to him what Mel Glempt had seen outside the Green Room the night before.

Bowman said, "This is a con. You're setting me up. You're lying."

I shook my head. A setup was not out of the question, but I knew it wasn't mine.

He asked for the name of the witness. I told him and provided Glempt's address and phone number. I added, "He'll talk to you and your people, but he won't talk to the night squad guys and would rather they did not know his identity."

"How come? Why's that?"

"Because," I said, "certain elements of the Albany Police Department cannot be trusted to do what's right a good part of the time. Or even what's legal. Face it, Ned, that's the sad truth."

He threw his head back and snorted in disbelief, as if I had tried to convince him that the world was an ovoid slab supported by a three-pronged stick.

Bowman knew what I meant, though. He walked to the telephone and hesitated. Then, making sure his back was to me, he dialed a number.

Dot Fisher was fixing club sandwiches and Senegalese soup and setting out more iced tea. She moved about the kitchen muttering under her breath and forcing a wan smile whenever anyone addressed her.

McWhirter returned to the room and resumed his pacing. He had questions: "Has the FBI been called?" "Why don't you arrest this Trefusis mobster? He must be the one behind all this." "When could they have taken Peter? How?"

Watching McWhirter carefully, I told him what Mel Glempt had seen. He stood trembling for a moment,

then slumped into a chair and buried his head in his hands.

Bowman completed his call and ambled back to the table. He was shaking his head, clear-eyed, his movements a tad jauntier than the occasion, as I saw it, required. He looked at me coolly and said simply, "Uhn-uhn." As if that was the end of that: Glempt had been mistaken about the cop he saw, or lying.

Timmy caught this and gave me a look. Here was an education for this sunny, optimistic fellow who had spent much of his adult life in the more wholesome and uncomplicated atmosphere of the back rooms of the state legislature.

Bowman did say he was sending two of his own men out to interview Glempt to get his "confused account of the abduction," and Bowman further announced that he now had half the detective bureau working on the case and needed more information on Greco's background and recent activities, as well as Dot's and Edith's. I convinced McWhirter that I would personally follow up on "the cop Mel Glempt saw"—this made Bowman writhe with indignant disgust—so for half an hour, over lunch, a tense, snappish interrogation went forward.

It yielded nothing. Greco's family had moved to San Diego eleven years earlier and he had no known remaining Albany connections other than Tad Purcell. Nor could Dot come up with names of any "enemies" of hers or Edith's—former students, colleagues, relatives, neighbors—beyond the ones we already knew about: the Wilsons, Deems, and Crane Trefusis.

Bowman said he had detectives out at that moment checking into the activities of Dot's Moon Road neighbors and would personally interview Crane Trefusis, which struck me as a wonderfully droll waste of time. Bowman allowed as how his bureau was also looking at some of the notorious local "hate groups," although he was clearly disinclined to investigate further the particular hate group which the only evidence we had pointed to.

"Lieutenant Bowman," Dot said. "You're not eating your Senegalese soup. Could I get you something else?"

"No, no, I'm fine. What's in this?"

"Tons of fresh vegetables straight from our garden. The herbs and spices are from Edith's little plot."

"Nnn. Looks good." He contemplated the greenish-yellow curried soup.

There was a light rap at the door and Dot heaved herself up.

"It's for you, Don. A man with a beautiful suitcase."

I went outside and watched Whitney Tarkington, in white ducks and a burgundy Calvin Klein polo shirt, place a Gucci bag on the terrace. He unsnapped it and held it open.

"It's all here, Donald. One hundred thousand—soon to become one hundred ten thousand—big ones."

"Dollars, you mean."

"Of course, dollars. What else?"

"In that bag it might have been lira."

"Ha-ha."

I peered into the bag and did a double take. "I see dollars, yes. I also see . . .Checks?"

"Twenty-eight thousand in cash, seventy-two thousand in checks. Best I could do on a Saturday, Donald. God, I had to bust my carefully toned buns just to come up with this on three hours' notice. I mean, a hundred grand in cash? You think I'm Grams or somebody?"

"Checks, Whitney? You think kidnappers are going to accept checks for a ransom payment?"

"They're good. Really they are."

"Crap. That's hardly the point. Crap."

"I mean, all of them will be good first thing Monday morning. They'll be covered, for sure. You can bet your life on it, Donald."

"Not my life, Whitney. Peter Greco's life. Thanks anyway. "

"That's quite all right. I owed you one, didn't I? Now we're even. Or will be, when you hand me a hundred and ten thousand dollars—U.S. currency, please—seventy-two hours from this second."

He grinned dazzlingly and touched his perm.

"Of course," I said. "See you Tuesday, Whitney. Same time, same place. I might even return the bag."

"Just have it dry-cleaned if it's smudged," he said. "Toodle-ooo." He climbed back into his canary yellow sports car and drove off.

Timmy looked out. "Is that a Porsche nine-eleven? You don't see those around here too often."

"Looks like a Gloria Vanderbilt to me," I said, and went inside.

I phoned Crane Trefusis again. "I have to cash a number of checks. Seventy-two thousand dollars' worth. They're good. But the banks are closing, and Price Chopper revoked my We-Do-More-Club card last March over a minor incident involving a rib roast, a bunch of asparagus, and a smallish check the State Bank of Albany inexplicably declined to take seriously. You'll help me out, of course."

A pause. "Of course. Have you found the culprits yet?"

"Which ones?"

"Any of them."

"Not yet."

"You will."

"You bet, Crane. Have you come across any information that might help me in my labors?"

"I'm sorry, but I haven't. I don't actually spend a great deal of time with criminals in my business, Strachey."

"How much?"

"How much what?"

"How much time do you spend with criminals in your business? An hour a week? Three days? Forty-five minutes? What?"

"None that I'm aware of. Not that I'll ever convince a professional skeptic like you."

"Just keep your ear to the ground, Crane. That's all I ask. You never know."

"Of course."

We worked out details for the check cashing and I rang off.

Bowman had neglected his Senegalese soup but was finishing off a second sandwich.

I said, "Hey, Ned. What if the kidnappers are hiding out at the bottom of that soup bowl?"

He blew me a tiny kiss. Dot, a woman of apparently limitless reserves of charity, shook her head, embarrassed for Bowman, a man very hard to be embarrassed for, if not about.

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